Lisbeth, 1979
I could see tiny fish on the wall surrounding me,
unmoving. Those were not real fish, obviously, but dark marks on the
wood, were the branches had once been. Nonetheless, the Summer
night’s shadows turned them into little fish in my eyes. Probably,
because my dad and my brother had gone fishing that day and I wanted
to fish too, so I had lied down on my tummy on the muddy shore,
staying still and trying to catch tiny fish, that dared to come
close, with my bare hands. I had caught only a common toad, however,
and found a lid for a yogurt pot, that someone had thrown away, as
well as two shells, from which neither was bigger than a coin. And I
had managed to burn my bare shoulders in the sun. This was only our
second day on the coast, and mom was furious that I had gotten
sunburned. She feared that I could get skin cancer before I even grew
up to be an adult. The rest of the week, I had to stay away from the
sun and if I were to go outside, I was forced to use a jacket to
cover my skin, even though it was already unbearably hot. I hated the
feeling of the jacket getting glued to my sweaty back. Besides, I had
wanted to join the picnic that mom and dad had planned for tomorrow
but now I could not. I was forced to stay in the cabin with my older
sister Tina, who would be mad at me since she had to give up the
picnic herself as well, as I still needed someone to babysit me. I
already knew, that tomorrow would be everything but fun. Tina would
probably sit on the porch sunbathing and listening to music from her
new, giraffe-like-yellow portable radio, and I would have to play
alone inside or read one of my many books, I had already read too
many times.
I tried to change into a better position but my
burnt shoulders did not let me sleep in any other position than on my
tummy. My chin was hurting and I felt like the pillow was trying to
suffocate me and my legs were restless. I looked at my sister who was
breathing loudly and I knew she would start to snore soon, and after
that, it would be impossible for me to fall asleep. It was as if the
little fish on the wall were moving slightly in the darkness of the
night. As if they were trying to get away from the shadows created by
my hands. I got up from my bed and decide to visit the shore before
trying to get some sleep for the second time. If only I had known, it
would be the last time, I had stayed in the bed listening to my
sister snoring.
Detective Inspector Hans Kaira
It had been almost forty years since Lisbeth
Jennings’ death. Lisbeth drowned in 1979 in the rushes on the
shore, when her family was visiting their summer house. She was only
twelve. Otto Green, a seventeen-year-old boy from the neighbor, told
he had been sleeping on the veranda of his relative’s cottage,
since the night was so hot, and was woken up by a sound that reminded
him of a bird floundering in the water. Otto told, he could not see
the neighboring house from where he were, as there were lilacs and
apple trees growing between the too summer houses. The noise had
stopped but it had already peaked Otto’s interest, so the boy went
to see what had happened. He saw then a little body floating on the
shore, he told me, that looked like a big doll. The blond hair
surrounded the head like a crown. Otto said he ran to the girl,
lifted her up and carried her into the Jennings’ house yelling
help. Lisbeth’s father tried to revive her but did not succeed.
At first, we believed it had been an accident but
Lisbeth’s parents as well as her brother and sister told that she
had been an excellent swimmer. Lisbeth’s brother had given her a
nickname ‘Little Toad’ due to her love for water and because she
had freckles on her face. In addition to that, we found signs on her
body, that someone had forcefully pushed her underwater. When the
family members were interrogated, it was obvious that Lisbeth’s
father, Albert Jennings, did not tell us all he knew. He was
certainly hiding something. But there was never any evidence against
him. Two years after Lisbeth’s death, Albert Jennings committed
suicide in his home. Mr. Jennings shot himself with a hunting riffle.
That was it for the most of us: he had killed himself because he was
unable to live with the guilt after killing his daughter. Soon his
wife, Martha Jennings, suffered a stroke and lost her ability to
speak or move properly. Lisbeth’s death was buried in the bottom of
some dusty drawer in the archives. Now, forty years after all that,
Lisbeth’s sister Tina called me to inform that her mother Martha
had finally passed away.
Tina
Earlier that day, something had reminded me of my
childhood, that I had carefully learned to avoid. I sat on a porch on
a summer day, listening how raindrops were humming against the trees.
On my lap, I held a photo-album I had found from a closet in my
mother’s bedroom. Those pictures had been taken at our summer
house, during all those years we had been there. In the first
pictures, I was very little and my older brother was teasing me
constantly. In the later ones, however, I was with my little sister.
There was one where we were sitting on a dock, another where we were
rowing in our tiny rubber boat, one where we stood on a balcony in
our night gowns and another of my sister holding a perch in her hand,
that was too tiny to be eaten. There were no pictures of me from the
last summer though, as I had been sixteen and did not want to play
with my sister anymore. There were only two photos from that summer:
one of my dad and brother, taken when they were going fishing and
other of my sister when she had burned her shoulders badly. I
remembered how mad at her I was that day and later I always hoped I
had not been. After what had happened, my anger seemed so
meaningless.
I remembered waking up into a chaos: our neighbor
Otto, stormed into our summer house holding my sister in his arms.
She was dripping water, he was screaming help. I stood at the top of
the stairs and stared as dad and my brother placed her on the floor
and dad tried to give her CPR. My mom was yelling at me to leave and
not look. After a while, she forgot me and then she collapse on the
floor and wrapped my sister’s lifeless body in her arms. She was
crying. The next evening we left the summer house and never returned.
It had been a long time since I last thought of
that night. But going through that photo-album again during the
night, I felt a great need to see our old summer house again. Otto,
who was now my husband, promised me he would take me there if I
really wanted to, though he warned me that the summer house would
probably look completely different now. When we arrived there the
next day, I had to admit, he was right, unfortunately. There had been
three owners since we sold the house. Water level had risen and where
there had once been a garden table and chairs as well as a little
shed, it was all just water now. The old lilac trees, my grandma had
planted between the summer house and its neighbor, were all cut down
as well as the apple trees that had grown next to them. Not only had
our old summer house gotten an additional wing and a new coat of
paint, it was different from the inside as well. It had now all the
newest appliances so it reminded more like a real house than a
cottage. The room, I and my sister had been sleeping when were kids,
were now an office with a computer and an oak book shelf.
I was standing outside and looking at the sea and
the waterline that did not look familiar to me. I felt nothing. I had
thought, that I could imagine my sister playing on the shore or that
I could smell the lilacs in the wind, but instead there was nothing.
The only noise I could hear besides the calm waves was a little croak
of a common toad hopping on the grass. It made me smile as I thought
that my sister could still be there, after all. I sat on the grass
with the toad and opened up the photo-album I had gone though so many
times now. But right then I noticed something different. The inside
of the cover had gold paper glued onto it. It had been wrinkled when
I found it but was now coming off. From under it was peeking a piece
of grid paper, maybe a page from a notebook. I took it out carefully.
It was a suicide note written by my dad.
Detective Inspector Hans Kaira
I pulled my old jeep into the macadam driveway. As
I stepped out of it, I saw two, sad figures wrapped into each others
arms, sitting on the porch. Tina was leaning onto her husband Otto
Green, who years earlier had tried to save her sister, and was
sobbing against his chest. Otto held his arms gently around Tina and
was swinging calmly from side to side with his eyes closed. He opened
them when he heard me coming up the steps into the porch. He nodded
towards the note lying on the table and then closed his eyes again.
The note was hard to read. Albert Jennings,
Lisbeth’s father told in it, that he had been in trouble at the
time of his daughter’s death. Almost twenty years earlier Martha
and Albert had gotten married, but Albert had had another woman at
the time. The note emphasized that it had lasted only a couple of
weeks. Nonetheless, the other woman had gotten pregnant. It was not
until 1979 spring that Albert became aware he was the dad. The woman
had blackmailed him into giving her money. The child was then almost
an adult. Albert met the child few times in a shabby café outside
the town. It had come to Albert’s knowledge from the very
beginning, that his child showed some signs of mental instability and
lack of empathy. One time the child had come by Albert and Martha’s
home, acting aggressive. Albert had tried his best to get his child
to leave before anyone would come home, but failed. Lisbeth Jennings
had surprised the two together. Afterwards, Albert had asked Lisbeth
what she had heard and was convinced she was not a threat. But Albert
could not convince his son. And that is how Albert had known, when
their neighbor Otto Green carried Lisbeth into their summer home that
night, that his secret child had done it. However, Albert did not
give a name in his note as he did not want his child to go to prison.
At the end of the note Albert wrote that the guilt was simply too
much to bear.
Lisbeth, 1979
The sea was silent and noisy at the same time. It
breathed with deep breaths of soft waves against the shore and
somewhere in the blue and gray horizon the sun was getting up. It
painted the night clouds, hanging low, with its light red hue. I
would get no sleep that night and mom would be angry with me at the
breakfast, if I would be tired, sitting in the kitchen table, not
eating but rolling my spoon around my sugar frosted cereal without an
appetite. It would not matter as everyone seemed to be mad at me. My
brother was way too old to care about me, and my sister did not want
to play with me that summer either. I felt lonely. Only the birds and
the fish kept me company. Even the rubber boat, we had used with my
sister last summer, was still in the shed. No one would probably fill
it for me. Somewhere far away a seagull was laughing and flying above
the rippling water. I sat on the grass nearby the waterline.
I had been there for a while when I heard
footsteps. I had closed my eyes and when I opened them I saw Otto,
our neighbor, standing behind me. Suddenly I got scared, he had such
a fierce stare in his eyes. He came closer and I could smell the
sweet lilacs on him. I got an eerie need to run away from him. I got
up and jumped into the waterline. The water felt cold around my legs
and the mud freezing between my toes. I waded further and he
followed. Something was off about him. I remembered how he had been
in our house couple weeks prior. He had seemed agitated and I did not
know why. I was backing off slowly and keeping an eye on him when I
stumbled on a rock and flew onto my back into the water. The water
was all around me and I waved my hands trying to get up. Right then I
felt hands pressing on my shoulders. The touch felt unbearable
against my sunburned skin and I groaned in pain breathing in water
into my lungs. It tasted like salt and reminded me of those salty
crackers that my mom made me eat every time I had a stomach flu. The
hands on my shoulders pressed me into the muddy bottom and I could
not fight them. I felt such a pressure in my lungs, I was sure they
would burst any second.
It was strangely silent underwater. For a while I
stared into Otto’s face through the wavy surface but then
everything turned around. The sky and the water became one, lightly
purple mass and then I could not see anymore. My body felt hot and
heavy. Finally, my consciousness escaped me and the last thing I
thought about was those black branch marks on the wood in my bedroom,
that resembled little fish. It was as if they were dancing around me
like dead shadows. I wondered, if I would be allowed to join the
picnic tomorrow should I wear the jacket all day long?
